Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!psuvax1!psuvm!jkt100
From: JKT100@psuvm.psu.edu (JKT)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Commodore and \
Message-ID: <90352.201213JKT100@psuvm.psu.edu>
Date: 19 Dec 90 01:12:13 GMT
References: <6331@crash.cts.com> <1990Dec15.061257.1867@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
 <4271@vela.acs.oakland.edu> <111596@convex.convex.com>
Organization: Penn State University
Lines: 54

In article <111596@convex.convex.com>, swarren@convex.com (Steve Warren) says:
>
>In article <4271@vela.acs.oakland.edu> hastoerm@vela.acs.oakland.edu
>(Moriland) writes:
>                          [...]
>>Agreed. My favorite argument from IBM owners is that: "18 Million
>>MS-DOS users can't be WRONG!"
>>
>>To which I always reply: "Tell that to post-World War II Nazi Germany.
>>Hey! 18 Million Nazis can't be WRONG! Just because 18 Million people
>>make the same mistake doesn't mean it's the intelligent thing to do."
>                          [...]
>Oh, please.  As a rabid pro-Amiga dude, I have to say this is a most
>horribly inappropriate analogy that is almost as insulting to MS-DOS
>users as it is to the memory of the Holocaust victims.

I disagree.  First of all, the Nazi movement did not leave "the holocaust"
as its only legacy; plenty of French, British, Americans, and especially
Russians were also killed.  The poster was not putting down or insulting
"the memory of the holocaust," or at least I, for one, did not interpret
it that way.

In fact, I found his analogy to be disturbingly accurate.  Blindly following
the masses, assuming that "if everyone else does it, it must be the right
thing" is a continuing phenomenon.  The Germans DID do this in response to
the Nazi movement. Do you think every German who joined the Nazi party
specifically thought "hey, killing millions of people is a good idea"?
Of course not.  They just saw everyone on their block doing it and assumed
it was proper.  Some were also influenced by peer pressure, and others fell
to the propaganda of Hitler's regime.  What they ended up doing was, of
course wrong, but they did not know that when they joined the party.

I see MANY similarities between much of my previous paragraph and what is
happening today in the consumer computer market.  Obviously the outcome
will not be as horrible, but does that fact make the analogy any less
correct?  No.  Please look at the three comparisons:

1) Everyone else is doing it:  I've heard SO many people say "I want an
Amiga, but everyone else has PC's, so I think I'll get one of those."

2) Peer pressure:  "You want to get an Amiga? Why?  Just get a PC.  You
can't go wrong with one of those."

3) Media hype:  TV ads for the PS/1 and the "multimedia" PS/2.  Radio ads
for "Dan was an IBM man, sold IBM's by the truckload."  And now radio ads
for Sears business centers selling MS-Dos compatible computers.  If you
hear one kind of ad all day every day for months, be it about the Nazi
party or MS-DOS, it's going to sink in sooner or later.


All three of the above methods/reasons/phenomena are common to both
examples.  That part of the analogy is logically correct, and as terrible
as the holocaust was, I think that fact remains.  It does not diminish
or insult the holocause, in my opinion.